14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been hurt and left bleeding by the release of Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7. While the Mountain View Company deals with a totally different business than Microsoft's Vista and IE7, the truth is that both the operating system and the browser have breathed new life in Microsoft's presence on the Internet.
This has been felt starting with December 2006 and continuing through January and February 2007. Microsoft's search share, the combined results of MSN and Windows Live Search, has entered an ascendant trend since December 2006. Fueling the growth of MSN and Windows Live Search are Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7. Well? IE7, to be more exact.
Microsoft's browser has Windows Live Search set up as the default search engine in all copies of the browser. Microsoft does provide a comprehensive interface that easily enables the users to swap search engines, but the fact of the matter is that there is the general tendency to leave the default settings unchanged.
Microsoft has also been using its dominant position on the operating system market and ships a version of IE7 together with Windows Vista. Internet Explorer 7 in Vista has also set Windows Live Search as default search engine.
Internet Explorer 7 has shipped on October 18 2006, Windows Vista had its business launch on November 30 2006, and the commercial release on January 30, 2007. Microsoft's increase in search share over December, January and February can easily be correlated with both Windows Vista and IE7.
From January to February, the actual number of search queries introduced in Google dropped from 3,862,374,000 to 3,597,697,000. The searches entered in MSN/Windows Live Search also dropped from 642,694,000 to 618,315,000, but Microsoft's search share grew to 9.6%.